Democrats Skip Their Democratic Moment, Rushing to Anoint a Flawed Kamala Harris

The opportunity created by President Biden's exit from the 2024 contest is squandered by a nervous party that rushed to a candidate of lesser talents.

Vice President Kamala D. Harris of California. Official portrait from Wikipedia.

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\As I write this, a Democratic campaign talking head is talking — as talking heads do — about the strategic wonders of Vice President Kamala D. Harris of California as the new presidential candidate for my Democratic Party.

She’s a woman. She’s the daughter of immigrants. She’s Jamaican and Indian. She’s black and South Asian. She’s smart. She’s a penetrating questioner and a former prosecutor and California attorney general.

She’s an experienced senator and vice president.

Donald Trump will be flummoxed. Harris will win.

That’s what I just heard win CNN, except for the actual prediction of a victory, although it was implied.

But don’t bet on it. Kamala Harris in all likelihood will be defeated. Donald J. Trump will win the presidency and the opportunity to reshape the United States.

For three weeks after his inept and disastrous performance in the sole presidential debate held so far this year, the incumbent, Joe Biden, stubbornly resisted calls from his own supporters to leave the race.

Then Biden relented. He created an opportunity for Democrats to review their talented bench of senators, governors, and other Democrats including, yes, the vice president. Democrats could have had what Rep. James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, called a “mini primary” before next month’s national convention in Chicago.

But this exquisite democratic moment passed unfulfilled. Instead, the “deep state” of Democratic campaign consultants headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, on behalf of Biden rushed to anoint Vice President Harris. Experienced, talented, and desperate, they rapidly developed a bandwagon of support for Harris.

Which is where we are today. Except that Harris does not deserve the extraordinary support being heaped upon her new candidacy.

As my longtime partner, Elizabeth Wachsler, has pointed out, Harris is deeply flawed. She followed two predecessors — Mike Pence (under Trump) and Biden himself (under Obama) who distinguished themselves as supporters and advisors to their presidents as well as ambassadors to Congress from the White House. But Harris was undistinguished after three years in both of these attributes.

She is well known as a difficult boss. She churns through staff, and I fear she will now mow down the same corps of Democratic consultants that has just elevated her. The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph of London, and Politico have all reported on this.

Instead of coalescing somewhat reflexively around Harris, Democrats — who did the right thing in convincing Biden to give up his reëlection goal — could have capitalized on their extraordinary opportunity to sift through the party’s bench of talent to find a moderate and exciting Democrat who could take on Trump and win.

In my judgement, and despite a considerable effort during the past three years to engineer redemption in the press, Harris remains the difficult boss and weak leader that was revealed when she ran her own presidential campaign in 2019 and 2020.

Can she win? Yes, she might. I hope she does.

Will she win? In my judgement, she will lose badly. The Trump campaign will find its footing and tear her to pieces. Anything can happen, but at this point I believe a Trump victory and Harris loss is the most likely outcome.

Democrats have only themselves to blame for allowing an exciting democracy moment to pass, cutting off the rescue Biden hoped to enable.

In addition, Liz is right to point to the example of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yes, Secretary Clinton is 77 now and would be 78 on Election Day. But if you really wanted to see a genuine outpouring of support, she could have ignited that. I doubt that anyone alive is more prepared for the presidency than she is, including Biden and Trump.

You may object that selecting anyone besides Harris meant forgoing millions of directed campaign dollars. In the short run, yes. But before long, donations would have flowed. Money did not worry me.

In positing this renegade opinion, I remind my Democratic friends and family that once before in this 2024 presidential cycle, I told you so. I really did.

There were years when I admired Joe Biden. The “Amtrak Joe” story is compelling, especially since I’ve been an Amtrak guy, too. His election to the Senate as a young widower, taking the oath of office in his son’s hospital room, is both heartbreaking and memorable.

His Senate record is admirable. His first two attempts for the presidency were admirable. But the Neil Kinnock plagiarism episode was an event I could never forget. It was blatant and inexcusable. But I could forgive it. And I liked Joe Biden’s vice presidency. He may be naturally too impulsive for Barack Obama’s tastes, but they worked well together. Even though Barack liked Hillary better.

Fast forward to the 2021 inauguration. Joe Biden’s presidency is like Lyndon Johnson’s presidency and even like Richard Nixon’s presidency. Filled with legislative accomplishments that benefited America. Like Nixon, filled with foreign policy creativity and innovation rooted in classic post-war U.S. international order values.

But like Johnson and Nixon, Biden’s foreign policy is blighted. The Hamas-Israel war in Gaza is murderous. I am still sickened by the attacks on Jews in Israel of many nationalities, including U.S. citizens. I still want the remaining hostages returned, alive or dead. Israel is right to demand and fight for that. Israel is right to seek the termination of Hamas by any means. But Israel is not right to indiscriminately kill Gaza’s population. They are not all collateral damage, not by a long shot. Yet Biden let this carry on.

Biden lost me with his first foreign policy abhorrence, which was the 2021 withdrawal of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. This botched plan left 13 soldiers dead, hundreds of U.S. sympathizers and former U.S. employees stuck in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of school girls without a means to further their education, and millions of Afghani women and girls of all ages facing the male-dominated cruelty of the Taliban. Biden is the father and grandfather of girls. What father of girls condones this?

The elites of the Democratic Party stuck with President Biden when the polling from across America since 2022 was unmistakable. His health was not trusted by Americans. Americans did not want him on the ticket. Before long, polling showed that a majority of *Democrats* did not want him on the ticket.

As early as 2021, I wrote Facebook and blog posts opposing renominating Joe Biden in 2024. In late 2023 and in early 2024, I became serious about working publicly against Biden but within the Democratic Party’s nominating process.

I tried to nominate someone else, a good person and a thoughtful American with moderate policies and good values.

I worked to nominate U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.

Yes, Biden’s domestic record — sorry, Donald — has many good achievements. I am fond of noting that Trump’s “Infrastructure Week” finally happened, in a big big way. But it was brought to you by Biden and a bipartisan congressional coalition. Bully!

But Biden’s inattention to two critical problems — sorry, Joe — was tone deaf.

1. He and Harris cared not a whit about the onslaught of illegal aliens swarming into our country. They did not care until it was too late.

2. Biden and Harris did not care about the pernicious impact of raging inflation on the pocketbooks of ordinary moderate- and low-income Americans. They believe their own words about the growth of the economy — and it is growing — but they refused to treat the inflation side effect. The side effect is killing the family economy of many folks.

Joe Biden allowed his family, especially his brother, Jim, and his son Hunter to make millions trading on the Biden name. That’s corrupt. Corrupt!

As a father, Joe Biden has stood valiantly by his surviving son, Hunter. But as the president, Joe Biden has only once acknowleged the disappointment of Americans; Joe’s declaration on television that he would not pardon Hunter was the only occasion that I know of when Joe put his “president” face on while talking about his son’s risky lifestyle resulting in federal indictments.

The undercurrent of anger and disappointment with Biden grew in proportion with the Democratic National Committee’s determination in 2023 and early 2024 to make a democratic nomination process impossible in 2024.

I know because I helped to test the openness of the Democratic Party’s nomination primaries this year. Far from being democratic, the process was — dare I say it? — rigged. Rigged for Joe Biden.

“I told you so!”

I watched Rep. Phillips make a case that someone else should be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2024. Phillips did a media tour in late 2023 and practically begged big names — looking at you, Gretchen, and you, Gavin, and you, Amy, and you and you and you, successful Democratic elected officials across America — to run for the presidency. Y’all foolishly stuck with Biden. You were good Democrats. Good soldiers. But you are not soldiers. You are officers who should’ve known better. As officials, you had the authority in the party to protest. Instead, you were sheep. And you knew it.

I told you so!

When no one took his hint, Dean Phillips ran himself for the presidency. I supported him. I went to New Hampshire. I made phone calls to New Hampshire voters. Meanwhile, Biden had refused to register for the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary because New Hampshire is too white of a state for Rep. JIm Clyburn’s tastes, With Phillips spending millions of dollars on a campaign across New Hampshire, Biden and his insiders suddenly realized he could lose in New Hampshire. Biden ordered up a write-in campaign and swamped Phillips. Biden bent the rules. Biden forced local Democrats in New Hampshire to spend their time and money operating his difficult write-in campaign. Towns and cities in New Hampshire had to spend extra money to count a flood of write-in ballots. This was taxpayer money arrogantly spent by Biden. He should pay back the cities and towns of New Hampshire for their public expenditure made necessary by his complete and shameless arrogance in refusing to file for the primary. Then he and his henchpeople worked the rules of states like Florida and North Carolina and Tennessee to keep Phillips from running in those states’ primary elections. Phillips dropped out.

I told you so!

Instead of Harris, one or more of those leaders that Dean Phillips tried to coax into the race in 2023 should’ve run as the Democratic nominee for president and perhaps for vice president as well. They’re late to the game, but it was not too late to engineer a Democratic presidential victory.

Here’s the best news for Democrats: It ain’t over until it’s over.

It’s not even over if you are a doubter like I am.

Heck, in prior American elections and in national elections in democracies around the world, the real contest does not begin until even closer to the election than we are now.

Remember U.S. elections before, say, 1976.

Remember when U.S. campaigns did not gear up until Labor Day?

Tomorrow will mark 100 days until Election Day. Is a real campaign possible?

Sure!

See France. See Britain. See Germany. See Italy. See Ukraine.

See Japan. See South Korea. See Australia.

See Israel, which has had more elections in recent years than just about any other democracy.

Democrats loused up this year. Amazingly, Democrats can still win.

But having chosen Harris, I don’t think they will.